Favorite Things Fall 2025

Published: 2026-01-21

The mix from Rollcage to Ace Combat 3 is so smooth

Favorite things from the last 4 months (Sept - Dec 2025)

Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds is an extremely original game. It’s refreshing to play something original, unlike most indie games which just feel like they mashed up two interesting but disparate genres of game. I mean there’s nothing new under the sun, but Outer Wilds is novel enough for me to not be able to tell where any of it’s influences come from. It’s not the first “knowledge based puzzle game” I’ve played, but it’s certainly the best designed. Everything feels so tightly integrated into itself that one struggles to imagine how they started piecing this world together. It’s a space exploration game where you solve a mystery. It took me a few tries to really vibe with the game, but now it’s one of my favorites and one of the best of all time in my opinion. Take it slow, ask a friend for a hint if you get stuck, but the answer is usually staring right in front of you.

Piranesi

Piranesi is the first fiction novel I’ve read in an extremely long time. Most fiction related reading for me comes from comics and manga, which really only have dialouge, so the thick prose that is found in a lot of modern fiction Novels can be hard for me to parse at times. Piranesi was an extremely engaging and easy read for me as the book is told through the perspective of Piranesi’s field notes. so at times it feels like it has the tone and writing style of a non-fiction review, bordering on actionbuttonesque. The world of Piranesi is incredibly interesting and engaging, and spending time with Piranesi discussing how he lives and interacts with the halls is incredibly engaging. The mystery around the nature of the world is a big driving force in interest, and the actual answer they give as to “here is why this world exist and how it works” feels kinda underbaked? The book is really short after all and things feel like they wrap up fast.

Video Games that are “knowledge based exploration/mystery games about understanding the nature of a strange world” (Void Stranger, Outer Wilds) can kind of get away with the explanation of how things work being kind of weak, the appeal isn’t the answer itself, its the thinking and discoveries you make as the player to solve the puzzles and piece the answer together. Non interactive media has no such luxury in that sense, so They have to make a REALLY interesting explanation to make up for that. Expedition 33 does a really good job at having a really interesting explanation as to the nature of the world, the game isn’t about discovering that (it’s about parrying things) so I lump it’s plot in with Piranesi and other non-interactive mediums.

Good Book!

Hades 2

Hades 2 has an infectiously simple game-play loop, dance around floor patterns while pressing your rotation in whatever order it finds itself in that run clearing hordes of monsters. The writing is great, the game looks beautiful, And the character designs are all different kinds of hot person. The part that sticks out to me is how well the Oath of the unseen allows for gradual progression in the difficulty of the gameplay, considering the increase of power the player receives from the game having forms of perma progression. You slowly add more difficulty modifiers to eventually reach the “real” version of the games difficulty, topping out at whatever you feel is comfortable for your skill level. It’s very accessible in a way that doesn’t feel like going to weenie hut jr the way some easier difficulties can. Now that’s good game design.

2XKO

2xko is finally out for real now after about 10 years of waiting for it. And by “out” I mean only on PC and in early access but it’s publicly available so I think that counts. It’s the FGC’s first genuine stab at a live-service free to play fighting game which is great for accessibility, Although this game has all the horrible Riot monetization tactics that I’ve been able to mostly ignore so far. Also not a big fan of Riot Vanguard.

But the game-play is so loose and expressive and deep, the character design has also been stellar so far, everyone is cool!!! Even Caitlyn has an interesting moveset I want to try, and she’s objectively like the most dripless character they could’ve picked.

Duo’s are really odd and interesting and fun. I’ve mostly been using those as ways to get non FGC gamers into fighting games, but when you play with someone around your skill level it’s extremely fun and rewarding, you’re larping Pacific Rim.

Combos are too long and fury is busted. BoxJam Slam was a great watch.

Unbeatable

Unbeatable is made by guys who LOVE Studio Trigger. I LOVE Studio Trigger. We are Kin. The “adventure mode” has pretty terrible pacing issues (you get to play a game once every 90 minutes) and some pretty terrible progress blocking bugs, but the aesthetics are all on point, arcade mode is tight and that’s what I’m mostly here for. I wish there was a way to only install arcade mode as I’m sure most of the install size is the story mode and ~32 GB is a commitment for space limited devices like my steam deck. Slick Stylish Rhythm game, UI stylization to rival Persona 5.

Mr Robot

Inside you are two Linux Users. What starts as a story about a vigilante hacker depicting true to life accurate hacking turns into Metal Gear Solid 2 faster than you’d expect. Fantastic television, not sure why nobody talks about it though. I’m sure this or Bohemian Rasphody are wildly dissonant feeling depending on which one you check out first.

Hirayasumi

Most “Slice of Life” Manga I read end up being sitcoms or cozyslop, Hirayasumi feels like it’s in love with living, and slowing down to appreciate all the small mundanities we take for granted. It’s also packed with themes that are critical hitting a few of my insecurities about figuring out what you want to do with your life and worrying if you won’t be good enough to accomplish your goals, but deep down it knows you’ll be okay. I find comfort in that.

Redline

Redline is a Boy movie. Cars go vroom and I was like “this is sick actually”. Big animation on these cars here. Plot might as well not exist, contains the most unnecessary nudity in a movie ever (they really wanted to draw anime boobs).

Deadlock

Deadlock is the most esoteric, over-complicated, drawn out game of tug of war I’ve played. There’s three lines of rope, certain points of the rope have knots in it that you need to spend extra long unting, you can punch the people trying to pull the line to knock them out for a few seconds, you can go to home depot to buy equipment to make you better at punching the other team to pull the rope… okay I think this metaphor is falling apart.

It’s is loose, loose in the same way 2XKO feels loose in comparison to something like Marvel Tokon. It’s a Moba with hero shooter gameplay, genres I have none and very little experience in respectively, but it’s filled with expression in how you pilot your character through delicious Source2 movement and how your character can modify the specific role they fulfill in the context of a match through how you build them. It’s very interesting as someone who’s only competitive gaming has been through fighting games. I might write about it in detail another time.

I hope the game doesn’t become terrible after it leaves closed testing and becomes monetized. I main Mina and I built my 25% win rate loss by loss.

Resident evil 4 (2005)

RE4 is like the first AAA game if you don’t count Metal Gear Solid. I’ve dodged a lot of “horror” games mostly due to not liking horror stuff in general (why would I want to make myself afraid???) but I’ve been aware of RE4’s significance to game design that I felt like a poser for not having played it. I played it with the HD texture pack and Gyro controls through steaminput, as a Nerrel fan I really couldn’t do it any other way.

Gyro did kind of trivialize headshots but I still found the game to be plenty difficult, must be that adaptive difficulty I’ve heard so much about. The game is campy and odd, It feels a lot like devil may cry because it was devil may cry. Ashley isn’t that frustrating to manage, I mean it’s not fun, I didn’t enjoy doing it, but it’s not has horrible as I was prepared for after around 20 years of her being used as an example of terrible escort missions. The Tank controls don’t really make much sense now that the game has the third person camera but they feel fine once you get used to them.

I should finally play Signalis.

Boris live in Toronto

Boris Heavymetal is heavy and metal. I’m sure Boris as a band name sounds really cool to Japanese people and not like a regular dude’s name. Similar to Tina being re-named to Terria in the international versions of FF6.

I wore my parappa the rapper hat to the venue and was greeted by many a smoking goth person. They all liked the hat though. My first metal concert, First time someone’s brought out a double neck guitar. Their encore was the entirety of Feebacker which is funny. The Feedbacker in Ultrakill is actually what brought me to the band in the first place.

Flood is on streaming now go stream it.

Anamanaguchi live in Toronto

Playing Hopes and Dreams from Undertale was strange but fitting I guess. People who were clearly fans of Scott Pilgrim being present makes a lot of sense, especially given the city, however I wasn’t expecting all the Miku fans (more than one person in full Miku Cosplay).

Anamanaguchi are known for their chiptune rock sound, so I was interested in how they were going to go about replicating that sound live. Ginger Root went through a great deal to re-create his music and aesthetic in the context of a live show, but tragically Anamanaguchi was a standard 2 guitar 1 bass 1 drummer rock band setup, with the chiptunes being played through the sound system along with their guitars… Show was still good though.

My Friend Lee’s graduation party

My friend Lee graduated university in May a threw a clash-royale themed party to celebrate. I won the grand prize of… a Sephora gift card.

Meeting Ramy

Met Ramy Zhang! yeah I’m saying her name like you know her, if you don’t, she’s playing a show in Feburary. She showed me a nice Viet cafe that I will gatekeep (unless you ask nicely).